Improving lending sites - BTCJam and BitLendingClub

[Joe200]

Lending sites like BTCJam and BitLendingClub provide a potential opportunity for investors. Right now, there are some major issues with their interfaces. Please fix them. Easier to use = more investors = you make more money.

* I should be able to search, filter, and sort by anything I want. This applies to the loan listings, the borrowers, the lenders, or any combination of that. For example, I want to see listings for 30 day loans, not linked to the dollar, where the borrower has already repaid 10 BTC in other loans, and where there are already 20 lenders funding this loan. (And the result of the search should have any columns that I want.)

Any piece of publicly available information should be searchable.

I understand that you have to keep the interface clean. Possibly have the current interface as well as a more advanced interface. Or maybe allow this advanced searching through the API. API means I have to do additional work, so an advanced interface is preferable. Allow me to save a search.

* I'd like to leave notes / ratings on listings and people that are only for myself. For example, say I review some listing and decide not to lend because I don't think the borrower is credible, even though he has a high credit rating. I should be able to leave a personal rating for the borrower indicating that I don't trust him. This personal rating should be one of the things that I could search / filter by. And I should be able to leave notes to myself to remind myself of why I left this rating.

Instead, now, I see a listing, and I remember that a few days ago, I decided not to lend to this borrower on another listing. But I don't remember why. So I have to re-investigate his profile all over again.

The personal rating could have an associated date. If I see that I rated someone badly a month ago, I will look at them again to see if I like them now.

* The current pages that list what I've invested in and the flows of money are almost useless. I need to see a balance sheet. Money flowing into my account (from my deposits or interest payments). Money flowing out of my account (into investments or from withdrawals).

As an absolute minimum, a single table, that, on each line, shows a transaction -- either inflow or outflow, and the balance after the transaction. That's a minimum, and actually would only have limited use.

A better table (in addition to having the above table) would have money I invested on the left, balanced against interest payments on the right. With dates, borrower names, listings.

If a listing has been canceled / not funded, do not simply delete that entry from the table! And do not delete the page of the listing! I need to know what happened. All pages should be permanent.

A summary table showing how much I put in, how much I have, and what the gain / loss was.

As a bonus, a table showing that for each borrower with whom I've dealt.

[Joe200]

Anyone from BTCJam or BitLendingClub want to comment?

[btcjamads]

Hi Joe200

thanks a lot for taking the time to give your feedback and for being a valued member at BTCJam.

We know that our interface is lacking some critical functionality and we are working hard to add those in the coming weeks. In general, please add such suggestions to our uservoice
https://btcjam.uservoice.com/forums/175861-general

1. The search you suggested is a great idea. while you can filter for about half of the criteria you mentioned, I'll pass this on to the product team.

2. That self note idea is something I hadn't heard of, would need to see how big the need is amongst other users in order to prioritize this. uservoice would help!


3. Many good ideas here. For now, we do have a transactions table which you can see from right below your balance in the main dashboard, or direct link here: https://btcjam.com/transactions

For the suggested ideas you feel particularly strong about, or all of them: please add to the uservoice so we can help prioritize:
https://btcjam.uservoice.com/forums/175861-general

If you have more ideas, please let us also know at support@btcjam.com

Would love to keep the dialogue open and looking forward to having you as a customer for many years to come!

best

Flavio BTCJam

[BitLendingClub]

Lending sites like BTCJam and BitLendingClub provide a potential opportunity for investors. Right now, there are some major issues with their interfaces. Please fix them. Easier to use = more investors = you make more money.

* I should be able to search, filter, and sort by anything I want. This applies to the loan listings, the borrowers, the lenders, or any combination of that. For example, I want to see listings for 30 day loans, not linked to the dollar, where the borrower has already repaid 10 BTC in other loans, and where there are already 20 lenders funding this loan. (And the result of the search should have any columns that I want.)

Any piece of publicly available information should be searchable.

I understand that you have to keep the interface clean. Possibly have the current interface as well as a more advanced interface. Or maybe allow this advanced searching through the API. API means I have to do additional work, so an advanced interface is preferable. Allow me to save a search.

* I'd like to leave notes / ratings on listings and people that are only for myself. For example, say I review some listing and decide not to lend because I don't think the borrower is credible, even though he has a high credit rating. I should be able to leave a personal rating for the borrower indicating that I don't trust him. This personal rating should be one of the things that I could search / filter by. And I should be able to leave notes to myself to remind myself of why I left this rating.

Instead, now, I see a listing, and I remember that a few days ago, I decided not to lend to this borrower on another listing. But I don't remember why. So I have to re-investigate his profile all over again.

The personal rating could have an associated date. If I see that I rated someone badly a month ago, I will look at them again to see if I like them now.

* The current pages that list what I've invested in and the flows of money are almost useless. I need to see a balance sheet. Money flowing into my account (from my deposits or interest payments). Money flowing out of my account (into investments or from withdrawals).

As an absolute minimum, a single table, that, on each line, shows a transaction -- either inflow or outflow, and the balance after the transaction. That's a minimum, and actually would only have limited use.

A better table (in addition to having the above table) would have money I invested on the left, balanced against interest payments on the right. With dates, borrower names, listings.

If a listing has been canceled / not funded, do not simply delete that entry from the table! And do not delete the page of the listing! I need to know what happened. All pages should be permanent.

A summary table showing how much I put in, how much I have, and what the gain / loss was.

As a bonus, a table showing that for each borrower with whom I've dealt.

Hi Joe,
Thanks for the feedback. There are a lot of great ideas here, we will add it to our backlog and we'll target them appropriately. Please feel free to keep in touch with us via any of the following channels:
e-mail: support@bitlendingclub.com
forum: http://forum.bitlendingclub.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bitlendingclub

Please feel free to let me know when you think of anything else. We're always working to improve our system, even if it takes us a while to get there . However, our dev team has been outstanding and they've been staying on top of things without a hiccup.
Best Regards,
Kiril Gantchev
CEO of BitLendingClub

[Professor James Moriarty]

 While we got you guys here , how about people might actually get some smaller loans and build up to big loans by little increments and just get a big loan in the end and run away with it , what are your preventions for that to not happen?

[BitLendingClub]

While we got you guys here , how about people might actually get some smaller loans and build up to big loans by little increments and just get a big loan in the end and run away with it , what are your preventions for that to not happen?

There is no way to stop that, but there is ways to reduce the risk of it happening. BTCJam has binding arbitration agreements, while we don't yet (but we're working on them). However, arbitration agreements only work when you can take the party to court and you can collect on the ruling, otherwise you're stuck. In general, BLC is a lot more proactive about catching scammers and that has reflected in our lower default rates: we have around 3.5% defaults, while the last report I saw from BTCJam was around 10% defaults.

You can learn more about our investor's success stories here: http://forum.bitlendingclub.com/index.php?threads/show-us-your-investment-success.26/

[Joe200]

Thank you both.

[jrsfiend]

To anyone who's interested (I'm posting this in a few places) I've written a Python script that consumes btcjam's API and returns useful stuff based on user-input stuff. Look, see for yourself: (Anyone mind telling me how to properly use img tags?)

Some code!

http://imgur.com/Kp12rTX

Some settings!

http://imgur.com/inKCKuN

Some output!

http://imgur.com/FpM4FuV

Also this is my first post/s on bitcointalk so hi everyone.

This script can be either implemented as an automated investor, or can output the description to your spreadsheet so you can see the output then search any listing you find juicy through btcjam's own UI.

What I'd like to do is offer this as a subscription service where I provide you with access to your own spreadsheet where you get to set your variables, and I run the script from my paid amazon ec2 instance (I really have one, http://jarettrsdunn.com it does some other stuff too. Then it updates with your specific variable input into your shared-access spreadsheet every x hours or whathaveyou.

I can edit or update the script before sale as much as is reasonable, and perform updates going forward for features and functionality as required. The next step for me would have been a graph illustrating different variable input vs. profitability of investments over time to give me a historically accurate sense of how my investment strategy would work if I invested x amount.

Anyways, I'm open to negotiation on price for this service. PM me or answer here. I'm putting this ad in two other spots (it'll be on the feature update request for btcjam thread, the service announcement area and the btcjam's announcement area).

I seem to have not been able to find a public API for bitlendingclub, which is unfortunate, but if I was mistaken you can tell me and if there's interest I can write a script that will crawl the site using whatever they use to output to the UI and then give info from there.

[BitLendingClub]

I seem to have not been able to find a public API for bitlendingclub, which is unfortunate, but if I was mistaken you can tell me and if there's interest I can write a script that will crawl the site using whatever they use to output to the UI and then give info from there.

Some users have created an unofficial API for BitLendingClub, you can read more about the API on our forum: http://forum.bitlendingclub.com/index.php?threads/unoficcial-read-only-api.89/

We don't officially support it, but feel free to use it at your own discretion. Please beware that changes to our interface may break the API, since the API relies on scraping our website. We are working on an API, but we don't have an ETA on when it will be coming.
Best Regards,
Kiril Gantchev
CEO of BitLendingClub

[jrsfiend]

Thanks, Kiril! I'll have a look and if this service works out I'll be more than happy to update it as the API breaks. I haven't looked at it yet but if it's open source then I'll just end up being a contributor.

By the way I got three emails this morning from BitLendingClub and one of my documents has been approved! Hoorah, slightly closer to the end result!

-Jare

[BitLendingClub]

Thanks, Kiril! I'll have a look and if this service works out I'll be more than happy to update it as the API breaks. I haven't looked at it yet but if it's open source then I'll just end up being a contributor.

By the way I got three emails this morning from BitLendingClub and one of my documents has been approved! Hoorah, slightly closer to the end result!

-Jare

Glad to be helpful and I really hope you enjoy our platform!
Best Regards,
Kiril Gantchev
CEO of BitLendingClub

[BitLendingClub]

Hi everybody! I'm glad to announce that we've recently released our advanced filters and the first version of our API.

The API can be found here: https://bitlendingclub.com/developers
The filters here: https://bitlendingclub.com/loan/advanced-filter/show_filter/1

The advanced filters allow you to filter out just about any information available on the loans and the users. The filters can be saved and you can subscribe to receive e-mail notifications whenever a loan is posted and it matches your filter.
Best Regards,
Kiril Gantchev
CEO of BitLendingClub

[Roquene]

If a listing has been canceled / not funded, do not simply delete that entry from the table! And do not delete the page of the listing! I need to know what happened. All pages should be permanent.

And thats the Reason i want to delete my account.
I was forced to cancel a listing because I had set a wrong option. But now that is forever in my list. It annoys me extremely. And looks unprofessional. Absolute no-go.

[BitLendingClub]

Hi Guys,
I wanted to update you on our efforts to lower defaults and to get a better credit rating system in place. We released new underwriting rules in the beginning of March and it's already had an amazing impact: we've brought down the default rate by over 50% (from 16.97% to 7.9%)!


It's quite reasonable to suggest that 2 months is not sufficient to determine the default rate, but please note that we count late loans as default. So 100% of the loans reach maturity within 30 days: the average loan term is 30 days and the maximum payment frequency is 30 days.

Furthermore, we've released a new credit rating system and it's performing quite well. You can see the detailed statistics on the defaults per loan grade and a number of other statistics on our stats page: https://bitlendingclub.com/stats

Best Regards,
Kiril Gantchev
CEO of BitLendingClub
Twitter: @kgantchev

Connect with us:
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Google+: https://plus.google.com/+BitLendingClub